


to be among those in the know (or else be alone)

by viceandvirtue



Series: Pocket Litter [1]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Companionship, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Healthy Coping Mechanisms, I just wanted Kuroko to be happy for once dang it!, I'm Going to Hell, Original Character(s) Death, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Possessive Kuroko Tetsuya, Protective Original Female Character(s), Secretive Kuroko Tetsuya, and this is what it turned into, letter writing, mentions of a dysfunctional childhood, not a whole lot of comfort, some comfort?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-13 18:55:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14118759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceandvirtue/pseuds/viceandvirtue
Summary: In order to love someone else, you must first love yourself. But two broken people can at least come together and patch their broken pieces into something beautiful.





	1. and lose and start again

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first foray into the KnB franchise...it's something. Work title is from the poem "I Am Much Too Alone In This World, Yet Not Alone" by Rainer Maria Rilke. Chapter titles are from the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling.
> 
> I just wanted Kuroko to be happy for once dang it, and this is what it turned into. I hate my brain sometimes. Anyway, leave a review on your way out. That stuff is pretty much my lifeblood along with coffee. Also...go find me on Tumblr @ skyefox-blue. My virtual door is always open for prompts and asks and all that fun stuff. Or just feel free to rail at me. Whichever works.

She sits rather calmly, Tetsuya thinks, for someone who's struggling with everything inside of her.

_He knows that feeling rather well_.

She says her name is Phoebe Reynard, when they introduce themselves. 

And over the months and the years that they know each other, Tetsuya keeps Phoebe as his greatest secret. She's the one person who knows every part of him and loves him for it anyway. Any secrets between them are abolished when they sit chest to chest or side by side in her bed in the pitch black dark of midnight, her lips pressed to his ear, his throat, and his to hers. They speak in whispers because anything louder feels like a violation of an understood sanctuary.

He makes sure that Phoebe never meets the Generation or Seirin, or anybody else.

Phoebe is his, and he's hers. 

Tetsuya never meets the Scandinavian family she claims to love like air in her lungs but can't stand being around. He never meets the Chinese man that took her under his wing and took a brittle, fragile girl and turned her into a woman capable of fighting battles she would have shied from before.

Their relationship is an easy one and after a life filled with basketball and a promise to topple his former teammates from their thrones where they've been ensconced in arrogance and pride - and another promise to help bring his school to the top of the pyramid to drive the point home - it is a welcoming relief to have someone that demands nothing of him except his presence. 

Slowly, over the years they know each other, they put each other back together when they're both at their lowest, when they're both struggling with things that the rest of the world doesn't understand. Tetsuya might look harmless, but with Phoebe, he might as well be ruthless in a way he hardly ever is around anyone else. She understands that need for a veneer of innocence, feeds the monster Tetsuya neglects and gives it opportunities to run safely. He cherishes the things the monster that lives cradled in her chest shares with him, that same ruthlessness and a shared practicality that binds them both at the soul and at the brain. Kindred spirits in every way that matters.

He demands nothing of her in return, except that she doesn't leave him in the exact same way that the Generation did, before they'd ever met. She knows, of course. She had promised him and he knows she'll keep it. 

She still leaves him against her will, when her time has finally run out.

But he knew, they both did. They'd prepared for this inevitability, this eventuality when the doctors at the hospital could finally do no more for her.

His grief - when it registers - hits him with all the force of a volcano meeting a monsoon. It tears a cavity in his chest that he's not sure how to handle.

Tetsuya takes to writing her letters - a coping mechanism that becomes a balm to the gaping ache that's in his chest. He keeps them in a lockbox in his dresser, copies of them on a flash drive along with pictures of the two of them. He still has a key to the apartment that he was bequeathed with after her passing. He hasn't had the heart to go back and face the memories that paint the walls, that have sunk into the carpet. Everything is just as she left it last.

Eventually he'll have the courage to face her, when the hole in his chest is no longer a maw waiting to swallow him whole everytime he thinks he hears her laugh in the street or when he hears a foreign language being spoken in a crowded room or when he passes the shrines and remembers their days there. Even the animal shelter he once visited all the time holds little more for him than memories that eat away at him. 

Eventually. But for now, he'll keep writing his letters and not breathing a word about this to anyone else.


	2. and never breathe a word about your loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuroko writes his first letter after he loses his anchor. This puts a few things in perspective.

Kuroko still feels a little lost, in a daze that he can't quite shake himself out of.

After everything is said and done, his grief has gone unnoticed. He's not sure if the letters he's been contemplating will actually do anything to smooth the edges of the cavity in his chest, but it's worth a shot.

Anything other than this. Anything other than what he's living with.

One day, in the future, if there's an afterlife, maybe he can tell her all of this in person. But he's not certain, so he'll take to writing letters to tell her all the things he should be telling her out loud.

Even if she never responds.

So after school lets out for the day and basketball practice is over, once Nigou has been taken out and his homework is done, he sets pen to paper and begins to write the first of what ends up becoming many.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

_Phoebe,_

_It's been a week. ~~I don't know how I'm holding it together.~~ I think I'm holding it together okay._

~~_I thought I saw you again._ ~~

_You were right, what you said about my teammates and my friends. But I suppose it's a forgivable transgression, I haven't exactly shared much of myself with them. They couldn't possibly know how to spot the signs, my tells as you put it. Even Aomine-kun didn't realize overmuch that there was something wrong when I met up with him and Kagami-kun the other day._

_I wonder what you would have to say to that? You always ~~do~~ did have an opinion regarding them. _

_I stopped at the shrine the other day, the one a few miles out that looks over the sea from the cradle of the forest that is rarely ever visited anymore. You said it was your favourite, though you would never really answer me whenever I asked why._ ~~_I could have sworn I felt your presence there with me. I couldn't stand being there for very long, knowing I was there and you were not._ ~~ _Perhaps I'll be able to stay longer in the future and figure it out. You'd probably laugh at me if you ~~saw~~ could see me right now._

_I still haven't stopped by your apartment. I will, eventually. I -_

_> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>_

Kuroko stops. He has to, otherwise there's going to be tear stains on the paper and it will cause the ink to run. He doesn't know where he's going with this, he's just rambling. But there's something soothing about knowing that he doesn't have to bottle all of this up. That he can just  _let go_ the way he used to around the only woman outside of his mother that he would do absolutely anything for. Kuroko scrubs at his eyes furiously, pushing away the unshed tears and takes up his pen again. He's not going to write much more. But there's something he wants to get off his chest.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

_I guess there was just one thing I wanted to know...since I never got to ask and I'm pretty sure you ~~won't~~ wouldn't give me a straight answer, regardless._

_Were you happy? Did I help soothe the jagged edges of your heart, as you claimed that you would do with mine, that first afternoon we spent at the empty theatre? Did I make you happy? I hope I did, if only to help you in return for all the ways you helped me._

_~~I think you were more broken than I was, most days.~~ I admired you for your strength, because you were hurting, but never really showed that to me until we were out of time.  
_

~~_Why did you have to leave me? I hate your doctors for not doing more. I hate the world for taking you from me. I hate that no one noticed until it was too late. I hate it, I hate it, I hate this. Why?_ ~~

_I hope, wherever you are, that you've found the peace you didn't have here. ~~I hope you rest easy knowing you were loved.~~ You deserve your own happy ending, Phoebe._

_Kuroko_

_> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>_

Kuroko doesn't bother checking over the letter. He knows if he does, he's going to regret it, and that he'll throw it away as if that would make him forget.

So he grabs an envelope, writes Phoebe's name front and centre and writes the date in the top righthand corner, folds the letter before he places it inside and seals it. Opening a drawer, he finds an empty envelope box that he'd been using to collect miscellaneous things that ended up on his desk. He empties it out, letting thumbtacks and broken pens and pencils find their way into the trashcan. His letter is placed inside, facing forward as if he's just about to send it off. 

He puts the box back in the drawer and closes it, resolving to put it out of his mind.

Over the years, one letter becomes two, becomes three, becomes an entire box and then some.

As his collection grows, the weight on his shoulders, the cavity in his chest, eases until it's a barely there pain and he can breathe easy without feeling like he's going to shatter. It works. He doesn't stop writing to her. 

She never responds, but that's okay. 

She's still with him in all the ways that matter. Just as she promised him that stormy day at the old theatre.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How was that? Leave a review on your way out and let me know! Also, come find me on Tumblr @ skyefox-blue and drop something in my inbox if you feel up to it. Ciao!


	3. what is stronger than the human heart (which shatters over and over and still lives)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone finally takes notice. It isn't who Kuroko expects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from: 'the sun and her flowers' by Rupi Kaur

Sometimes his letters weren't very long. A sentence or two, just to get the barest of his feelings out of the way. It all culminated in  _I miss you_ , regardless of which words he actually chose.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

_Phoebe,_

_It's been a month now. I still miss you. Nothing has changed much, ~~just the fact that you're not here.~~ I wish you could have seen the koi pond today. The cherry blossoms have started falling. I think you would have liked it. I remember you said they were your favourite. I miss you._

 

_Kuroko_

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It wasn't Kagami who noticed something was wrong, first, or even Aomine, or Teppei. It was Tokugawa, instead - one of Phoebe's friends that he had met in passing once. Harada Tokugawa, like Kise, played the fool on occasion and hid his brilliantly sharp mind behind an easy grin and joking eyes. Phoebe ~~was~~ had always been exasperated at her friend's demeanour but let it go as one of those idiosyncrasies that she would never understand. Harada was a history and language student in university doing a long-distance program and he had the sharpest mind of anyone Kuroko knew outside of Akashi.

They ran into each other at the market, Harada haggling with the vendor over choice pomegranates when Kuroko brushed shoulders with him. When they had finally settled on a price, Harada turned around with a curious look in his eye that quickly turned to surprise when he recognized the blue-haired teen that had run into him. 

(That had been another thing, Phoebe had always been able to see him, even when others couldn’t. They had joked about enlightenment, but it had been something that he was never able to figure out. It made sense though, that Phoebe’s friends would have the same ability.) 

"Kuroko-kun," Harada murmured, surprise colouring his voice. "It's nice to see you."

"Ah, you as well, Tokugawa-san."

He didn't actually know Harada very well, their acquaintanceship only a passing thing. Harada busies himself collecting his pomegranates, using the idle motion to collect his thoughts.

It's a while before Harada speaks again, the two of them now walking amiably through the open market.

"You didn't come to the funeral," he says suddenly, stopping at the mouth of an unoccupied alleyway and spinning to face the younger teen.

Kuroko flinches and ducks his head. "I-" he starts and shakes his head. "I couldn't. It was still-still too-" he gives up, the words hitting a steel block in his throat. 

Almost immediately, Harada's eyes soften. "It hurt, I know," he says gently as he wraps an arm around Kuroko's shoulders and reeling him in for a gentle hug. "I didn't mean to make it sound like you were wrong for not attending, Kuroko-kun."

Kuroko only nods before pulling away from the embrace, and Harada lets him go easily, as if sensing his need to be independent and his lack of want for physical contact.

"Stop by my place sometime," Harada offers, slipping a folded piece of paper into his hand. "A form of therapy, maybe. Even if you don't think you need it."

"Thank you, Tokugawa-san," Kuroko murmurs graciously, tucking the paper into his pocket. He won't go. Probably.

"Call me Harada, Kuroko-kun. Any friend of Phoebe's is a friend of mine," Harada says cheerfully as he gives a lazy grin before he looks somewhere over Kuroko's shoulder. His smile drops. "Ah. It seems someone's spotted you, Kuroko-kun. I'll see you later. Think on it, though, yeah?"

"I will," Kuroko says as he watches Harada spin into the alley and vault over the dead end around the corner before he hears Kise at his shoulder. 

"You will what, Kurokocchi?" the energetic blond asks as he latches onto Kuroko. 

"Nothing, Kise-kun. Just talking to someone I know."

"Oh?" Kise prods, ever nosy, as he ushers Kuroko back into the crows of the market. 

"Yes Kise-kun. That's enough." He felt like he was talking to a child, sometimes, when interacting with Kise. And while he loved children, knowing how smart Kise could be when he applied had rankled his nerves endlessly when they were in school together. 

"Mou, Kurokocchi."

Kuroko wasn't going to say anything else though. Not only was he simply private by nature, but if he didn't want all of the Generation to know about his personal affairs within a record time it was simply better not to tell Kise anything.

They were his secrets anyway, as they had always been.


End file.
